Pius was a slave, according to his supposed brother, the apostolic father Hermas. As pope, Pius combatted Gnosticism—a religious movement teaching that matter is evil and that emancipation comes through spiritual truth attained only by revelatory esoteric knowledge—and the Marcionites, followers of a heretical Christianity proposing especially a doctrine of two gods as taught by the semi-Gnostic Marcion, whom Pius is believed to have excommunicated in 144/150. The claim that Pius was martyred is unsubstantiated.